The Meaning Behind it All
by LittleShipperHearts
Summary: What happens after the events of 47 seconds? I'm sure we all want to know...  Pairing: Caskett  of course  *Slight spoilers for 47 Seconds*


_Helloooo dear readers^^ _

_This fic is based on 47 seconds, as well as what I think would happen next haha :D so *SPOILER ALERT*_

_I wrote this fic based on my imagination, so I hope it isn't very OOC… oh and please please PLEASE leave me a review and gimme suggestions how to continue this… im not sure where I want to take this fic yet_

_A big thanks goes to my awesome Wifi (she knows what I mean) who helped with this fic… without her this would probably still be lurking somewhere in my laptop, never to see the light of day… :D (Shout-outs go to Sufa too~)_

_So anyway, enjoy my fic~~_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Castle... but IN MARLOWE WE TRUST_

One of these days, he's going to slam the door too hard, and it will finally break.

The sound echoes throughout the empty loft, sending shivers down her spine. She stiffens in mental preparation of a battle.

She draws air into her lungs (it doesn't help her racing pulse one bit), and steels herself to turn around. He's standing by the door; his shoulders are squared, his brows are drawn and his lips are pressed into a fine line. Her eyes shift directly onto his, but he's doing everything _not _to look at her. One look at him tells her he's pissed.

Really, really pissed.

He's not just pissed. He's _more_ than just pissed; he's fucking, royally pissed, and as tired as hell of all her bullshit.

He looks at everything in the room but her, trying to refocus his gaze on anything _but _her eyes. He knows once he does, all the fight in him is going to drain out, and he's going to back down and let her win.

But not today. Today, he's going to conquer her before she conquers him. He knows it's coming, he can see it, even though he wishes he had the strength to just walk out the door, and leave everything as it is. But he doesn't move away.

He's desperately trying to control the anger inside him. It's like a soap bubble; there's a fine line of things, and once the line is breached the bubble is going to pop. Either that or the bubble is going to pop by itself when the pressure is too much.

Unlike a soap bubble, however, when it does pop, it's not going to go silently. He knows it's going to re-open Pandora's Box, and he knows it's going to be uncontrollable. All he can hope for is that last glimmer of hope to fly out and right the wrongs. But that isn't what scares him.

What he's scared of is that he's doesn't know if the trail of destruction in its wake is ever going to mend.

She chooses her next move carefully. She knows he's holding back his wrath (she doesn't pretend she's not grateful for that), and knows a single wrong move can trigger the explosion of the nuclear bomb – one that they would be too late to diffuse. She sees his hands closing into fists; taunting, _daring_ her to repeat once more the words that had torn his heart into fragments, that had dashed all his hopes of 'happy ever after'.

He's still avoiding her gaze. She silently pleads him to shift his eyes just that little bit, to look into hers. They've always had an unexplainable telepathic connection, is he too far away? Or is he just blatantly ignoring it? She can't tell.

What she _can_ tell is the obvious hurt and anger in his eyes. The silent rage is what gets her. Castle's always had something to say, no matter the situation. Where were the witty one-liners? The light-hearted teasing? He never failed to speak his mind, what was holding him back now?

She sees it in his eyes. Those blue eyes that held such depth of loneliness and hatred. She hates it, hates the knowledge that _she_ had caused this. It makes her gut wrench with sickening force. The childish sparkle, the laugh lines around his eyes… Where were they? Is this man standing before her even Castle?

Guilt and self-hatred filled the empty pit in her stomach. The silence hung like a dead weight in the room, weighing all the air down to the floor until she felt short of breath. The air feels thick and hard to breath, and she has to suck it into her lungs.

She feels the hatred radiating from him, such ugly, hideous rage hidden away under the normally childish demeanor. She feels the cold, raw fear again; the same fear she held in her heart 10 years ago when she first came home to that yellow police tape, when she experienced first-hand the loss of someone you love.

She so desperately wants to say something, anything at all, to fill up the gaping silence, to make things normal again.

_Normal? What was normal?_

Before she could help herself, the furious resentment in her gut formed themselves into words, forcing themselves up her throat

"Castle. Castle I'm so sorry…"

If anything, that makes him even angrier. He finally meets her eye, but it isn't what she's expecting to see: gone was the warm, charming glow in his eyes, replaced with the cold fury embedded deep in the abyss of his eyes. It scares her.

"Sorry doesn't cut it, Kate."

Kate. _Kate. _She sends a silent prayer to whoever is watching over her that he can still think of her as 'Kate' in moments like these. But she doesn't have time to celebrate.

"It's over. We're done, Beckett."

The use of her last name shuts off the conversation as effectively as his study door slamming behind his forbidding silhouette.

She doesn't give herself time to think this through (she knows she'll probably regret it later on) and before she knows she's at his door, her fingers clasped around the cool metal of his doorknob.

He just needs a place to relax, to release these outrageous feelings he has. For once (and he hope the only time), he's genuinely pissed at Beckett – he's never been angry at her for long, not when she chides him for his theories, or even when she sends him home for being 'too close' to a case – but he really is thinking about _hurting _her, talking back to her, and to him these thoughts are unacceptable.

No. _No_ he needs to get away. Even for a little while, just to get away from Beckett and all the bullshit they've gotten themselves into. Just for a little while, he needs to clear his mind, detangle himself from the messy web they've spun. A part of him hopes by the time he gets back, everything will clear, the storm will pass, and the universe would sort itself out. Everything would go back to the way it was.

Wait. Does he actually want that? Want going back to their same old routine every day, turning a blind eye on the growth of their more-than-just-partners partnership? Want to go back to making too many innuendos to be strictly platonic; back to swallowing down the 'I love you' rising in his throat every morning as he passed her her morning coffee?

It confuses the shit out of him. Maybe a while away _will_ do him some good. Just a while…

"Castle."

No such luck.

He doesn't turn. Instead, he tracks the sound of her heels clicking across the room, and by the time he steels himself enough to turn around she's at his mahogany-wood desk, running the tips of her fingers across the polished surface. Her eyes are fixed on the veins of patterns running along the wood. He watches, transfixed, as she drags a nail down a vein, following the squiggly pattern in loops and turns. Eventually the line ends, and she lets her hand slide limply off the table to hang by her side.

The question is hanging in the air – the elephant in the room too big to ignore. They hear it as clear as day, even though the room is wrapped in silence.

He lifts his head, but doesn't meet her gaze.

"Go away, Beckett." His own voice sounds tired, weary with effort. Had he aged so much overnight?

He knows how things will end from now – badly would be an understatement. He doesn't even feel his fists clench until the dull prick of his nails pierce his skin. He turns away from her, hoping she would get his silent plea and leave.

She eyes him as he turns, feeling more than hearing his silent request to leave.

Is he just going to dismiss her like this? Send her away with a wave after the hell she went through deciding whether to confront him? Does she really mean _so little_ to him?

"Don't you walk away from me," she tells him, stepping forward and grabbing his arm to make him face her. She will not just be _dismissed _like that. But he shrugs her arm off of him, and her face masks in anger before her hands connect with his chest, pushing him back.

Her delicate hands aren't strong enough to even make him _move_, let alone stumble. He has the _nerve _to scoff in her face and smile through his anger, that shit-eating grin firmly on his face. It only serves to infuriate her more, and she shoves him again, harder, hard enough to make him stumble.

It was a reaction; a defence mechanism that came before he could stop it. His hands connect with her chest, and before he can stop himself he's pushed her back, enough to make her stumble back and her body connect hard with the wall behind her. The winds knocked out of her, and the guilt hits him like a ton of bricks.

Does he actually have it in him to hurt her? He's pissed – _really_ pissed, at that – but can he really hurt her when the time calls for it? Really pull the trigger of a loaded gun? He doesn't think so.

(he really, really hopes so too)

Her back collides with the hard cement of the wall, the arc of her skull and flair of her tailbone pressing painfully into the surface.

He comes over to her, trying to apologize, trying to hop back over the line he should have never crossed. She doesn't give him a chance; he's interrupted by a slap that leaves his face stinging and his blood rushing.

"How dare you," she spits out at him vehemently, and his anger boils. He has enough self-control left to hit the wall next to her face; his knuckles connect with the cement, and the force makes the plaster start to crumble under his fist.

She doesn't jump, doesn't even flinch. She needs to show to him she isn't frightened by his anger, that she can stand her ground as firmly as he can stand his. She just stares him down, knowing he doesn't have it in him to really hurt her.

She's trapped, her back against the wall and Castle hovering over her. But she doesn't shrink back, doesn't back down. She just lets him stand there, furious, knowing that this isn't a competition, but she needs to win anyway.

She's taking advantage of his gentlemen's demeanour: if she was scared, he'd feel guilty. Fix it, make it better, like the man he is. If she started attacking him, he would restrain her, making sure to not hurt her. But this standoff, this silent fury between them, the unspoken challenge that's arisen… it does nothing for the man that he is. It leaves him in a position where he needs to make the next move, but he doesn't have the strategy to proceed.

**~TBC~**


End file.
